The Healdsburg City Council is interested in finding a site for a homeless shelter that could serve Healdsburg’s shelterless population. That was the sentiment that was expressed unanimously by the council during a special city council meeting on homelessness on Monday night.
The question that remains though, is what kind of shelter would be considered and where in Healdsburg it would be located.
“This is certainly going to be an ongoing conversation,” said Healdsburg City Manager Jeff Kay. “We’re hearing an interest and we’re hearing some hope in the area of proactively doing something substantial, so we’ll continue to work hard to see what options we can put together.”
Kay said the goal would be to come back to the council quickly with an assessment of options for a homeless shelter in town.
“We feel like we got some marching orders to keep working forward and the right partners helping us do that,” Kay said.
Those partners include Reach for Home, the Sonoma County Continuum of Care and District 4 Supervisor James Gore, all of whom were included in the Sept. 13 council meeting.
Kay said Monday’s special meeting had been planned for months, however, COVID-19 and the drought caused a bit of a delay in convening the meeting.
In part, the workshop included information on Sonoma County’s point in time homeless count, Reach for Home’s efforts to address homelessness and their recent survey results on local needs of the shelterless community.
According to the Sonoma County annual point in time homeless count, which is conducted each year in the last 10 days of January, there were 69 shelterless individuals counted in Healdsburg in 2020.
In 2019, Healdsburg’s shelterless count was 73 and in 2018 it was 129, over three times higher than today’s figure.
According to Stephen Sotomayor, the city’s housing administrator, Healdsburg has the lowest number of sheltered individuals of all other geographical regions in Sonoma County.
“There’s many people in our community that want the issue of homelessness to go away and almost think that we can provide the solutions outside of our community, but as we know, the people who are homeless in our community — many of them — are folks who have been here maybe for their entire lives,” Gore said. “Sometimes solutions in Santa Rosa or Petaluma don’t provide services for north county. Vice versa, we don’t want to be a hub that tries to deal with the state problem, but at the same time, we want to be in a place where we own our local need, we take the will and we take the resources that are on the table and we take action.”
Currently, the typical process for getting shelterless people into the system of care includes an outreach team that engages with the unsheltered population and offers services such as showers or shelter.
Once in the system, a coordinated assessment system matches individuals with the appropriate housing program. Housing programs in the system of care include rapid rehousing, interim housing and permanent supportive housing.
Rapid rehousing provides time-limited subsidies and supportive services to households that can achieve economic self-sufficiency within the program term. Interim housing is temporary housing and site-based services.
Permanent supportive housing provides long term rental subsidies and intensive case management for households with disabilities.
Reach for Home’s services include a street medicine and outreach team that can conduct basic care and case management, a winter shelter that’s organized in partnership with St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and supportive housing through Victory Apartments in Healdsburg.
Margaret Sluyk, the executive director of Reach for Home, said they recently conducted a small survey of the local shelterless population to determine demographic and housing data.
Around 76 individuals were surveyed, with 51 being surveyed in Healdsburg. Twelve identified as female and 39 identified as male. According to the survey, only four people said they do not want help or housing. Three said they would consider a safe parking site and two said they would consider congregate shelter such as Sam Jones Hall.
Forty-six said their first or second choice would be low-income housing while others said a Los Guilicos-style shelter with tiny homes or modular homes would be their first or second choice.
All 51 who were surveyed in Healdsburg said they consider this area their home and 36 stated that they want to stay in northern Sonoma County while nine had no preference.
Sluyk said 30 are ready for case management. Five people said they already have regular jobs and an additional 27 people said they are capable of working. Thirteen said they are actively looking for work.
Sluyk also noted that none of the survey respondents identified as sex offenders and 17 said they would be OK with shelter sobriety requirements.
Based on the survey results, Reach for Home determined that their needs include 46 units to house Healdsburg’s unsheltered, 40 30% average median income units, 10 to 15 non-traditional jobs — such as work when you can construction jobs — and the need to grow their eviction diversion program.
It is, “One of the most vexing issues that the city faces,” Kay said of homelessness. “I think it is important that our approach as a city is compassionate and not just band-aid fixes.”
Supportive housing projects are in the pipeline for Healdsburg, however, many are a few years away from being completed.
Victory Apartments, which serves as both transitional and permanent supportive housing, currently has 11 units in operation. Ten units are planned at scattered Healdsburg sites and five units are planned for the 155 Dry Creek Road project.
Sotomayor said there are various options that the city could look into for a Healdsburg shelter, such as a congregate shelter, a safe parking/camping site, tiny homes or non-congregate shelters such as Elderberry Commons at the former Sebastopol Inn or the Holiday Inn in Windsor.
“One of the most important things to notice is that there is increased funding opportunities for development of a north county shelter. While that funding is now increased, there are challenges of course with sites, but more importantly, I think we have to understand what our shelter needs to look like,” Sotomayor said.
During the meeting, Vice Mayor Ozzy Jimenez asked Reach for Home when a local shelter would be erected and where.
Sluyk said one could manifest now if they had the land, and that the first step in looking to create a shelter is to find a piece of land that would make sense for the community.
Sluyk said that the number of individuals a shelter would be able to house largely depends on what kind of shelter is created. A Los Guilicos-style shelter with tiny homes on palettes could accommodate between 30 to 40 people.
During public comment, Chris Grabill, the director of housing services for St. Vincent de Paul, suggested that the city should look for a paved shelter site. He said it’s easier to install tiny home infrastructure on a paved or concrete site and it makes it easier to alter the shelter setup if needed.
Resident Gail Jonas, who’s been a longtime advocate for helping the local shelterless community, expressed excitement about the city’s willingness to look at the creation of a shelter and Jimenez shared her excitement.
“Our community of Healdsburg has been hungry for a solution, so I am excited to start embarking on this first initial process to get some supportive housing for those who are in need of it,” Jimenez said.
City staff will return to the council at a later date to present a more detailed report on possible shelter and housing options for the city.
